Disruptive By Design: Followership Is Overlooked
Opinions, conclusions and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Defense Department or any other U.S. government agency.
Followership isn’t the sexy, sustained or resonating idea leadership is, but it remains significant to leadership.
In the 2007 article “From Passive Recipients to Active Co-Producers: Followers’ Roles in the Leadership Process,” B. Shamir outlines how followership in the leadership process is necessary and dictated by circumstances. Shamir and leadership authors Gary Yukl, Jennifer M. George and Gareth R. Jones studied examples where followership was purely receptive and demonstrated through following orders, but they also outlined how a participative, co-leader engagement works depending on context and participant interactions.
Followership is often overlooked. Laureate Education offers video series like Elements of Leadership, in which experts have indicated the absence of attention to followership research and its significant role in the leadership process. Elements of Leadership interviewee Mary Uhl-Bien claimed followership as a critical element to leadership and the development of leadership, with a focus on passive and proactive followership.
From my experience, a leader and subsequent leadership cannot exist without followers and followership, passive or proactive. It is as simple or significant as that.
Let’s consider a significant situation with followers having participatory roles and how this impacts goal-setting and performance reviews. Participative follower roles foster positive impacts and improved outcomes for goal setting and performance reviews, according to practitioners and researchers alike.
Researchers Tom Tyler, John Dienhart and Terry Thomas’ 2008 “The Ethical Commitment to Compliance: Building Value-Based Cultures” presented examples of employee-engaged and voluntary ethics programs that convey the power of participation among individuals and groups. My personal experience supports this claim, too, time and again. We must lead and hold ourselves accountable at the personal, team and organizational levels.
Other researchers, like Pamela Brandeis, Ravi Dharwadkar and Kathleen Wheatley, in their 2004 “Social Exchanges Within Organizations and Work Outcomes: The Importance of Local and Global Relations,” described a continuous circle of reciprocity when followers are provided opportunities to render recognized input and take part in other social exchanges. We see this among teammates and others in briefer engagements. Too often, the less vocal followers await a turn to speak or contribute yet exceed expectations every time.
Benefits to participative follower roles include employee retention, greater commitment, improved decision quality, better time management and workload allocation, and buy-in and ownership of a process or performance toward goals. We’ve likely been part of organizations where followers went from opponents to proponents to participating in meetings and shaping achievable goals once they’ve been heard in a tense climate of dictator types. Followers gain hope and become inclined to reach goals because of growing trust and stakeholder roles established for all.
Some follower disruptions are ethical issues in continuing to promote models of followership. Ethically, the term followership may inspire a negative connotation compared to the glorified and well-researched concept of leadership. While models of followership have merit, leaders and leadership require followers and followership. Relationships between leaders and followers contain vital social and psychological significance for healthy relationships and opportunities for damage, per research. Thus, the promotion of followership models should continue with an emphasis on positive contributions. We’ve probably seen this: a default positive connotation for leaders while negative perceptions align with followers despite the actual circumstances.
Some ways to improve the followership and leadership dynamic in globally dispersed work environments include reading research articles like the Brandeis, Dharwadkar and Wheatley article but also reading people and spaces.
After years of COVID-19-inspired working environments, some leaders and followers experience discontent from distance, unavailability and contributing factors of dispersed working environments. I advise intentionally using idle time and or creating time for touchpoint meetings. A proactive rather than reactive leadership approach to culture can feed the needs of hungry followers.
